


winter bird

by magictodestroy



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, Gen, PTSD, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-05-20 17:49:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14899151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magictodestroy/pseuds/magictodestroy
Summary: Maedhros has a slow recovery.||Fingon brushes Maedhros’s hair. It’s growing back, jagged because Maedhros won’t let anyone cut it. He won’t let anyone but Fingon touch it.‘We don’t do this now,’ Fingon says. ‘We go inside now. We can move now. We don’t have to stare.’Maedhros twists his mouth, but doesn’t speak. He’s forgotten how to again. He follows Fingon inside because he doesn’t want to be scolded again. Because Fingon will chide softly, say ‘we aren’t there any longer’ as if he’s speaking to a child, as if there was a ‘we.’





	1. 9

The ice is too thin to walk on. 

Maedhros stands, hand pressed to the bark of a birch tree. It’s smooth and cold. The ice is fragmented, clear and white, crossed with lines. Maedhros feels his breath inside of him, warm, cold, burning hot. The sun skips across the sky. 

‘You’re staring too long,’ Fingon says. He takes Maedhros’s arm. He’s never afraid to hold it, even with his missing hand. He holds his arm, circles his hand around his wrist. 

Maedhros is waiting for it to freeze. He wants the whole ice to freeze. He doesn’t know why. It’s too thin. 

Fingon brushes Maedhros’s hair. It’s growing back, jagged because Maedhros won’t let anyone cut it. He won’t let anyone but Fingon touch it. 

‘We don’t do this now,’ Fingon says. ‘We go inside now. We can move now. We don’t have to stare.’ 

Maedhros twists his mouth, but doesn’t speak. He’s forgotten how to again. He follows Fingon inside because he doesn’t want to be scolded again. Because Fingon will chide softly, say ‘we aren’t there any longer’ as if he’s speaking to a child, as if there was a ‘we.’ 

Fingon’s hair is braided with gold. He sits by a fire and has Maedhros sit beside him. The gold in his braids glints. His eyes are dark brown and perfectly almond. He has a wide nose and golden brown skin. His lips are heavy, and his brows are thick. He says, ‘Maedhros,’ with such perfect sincerity. 

Maedhros stares at the fire. It was cold and hot all at once. Then. Now. Time loops and knits together and there is no past, no future, only now, and now holds everything. It holds the perfect warmth of the fire, the blistering burn of the coals, the stark cold, the naked cold that lasts so long it becomes hot and burns. 

‘We eat the soup,’ Fingon says, and Maglor laughs. 

‘He’s not a child.’ Maglor’s voice is bitter, twisted like his mouth. ‘Why the fuck do you think he’s a child?’ 

Fingon blows on a spoonful of soup. He holds it out to Maedhros’s lips. 

‘Here. For you.’ 

Maglor walks in short circles, hands over his face. He cries, and Maedhros wants to reach out and hold him still. He wants to tell him softly, gently, ‘Don’t be afraid, little brother. I’m here now, little brother.’ But he doesn’t know how to move or how to speak. All he knows is to stare, and he stares straight ahead, eyes heavy. 

The spoon touches his lips, and the warm broth is tilted into his mouth. 

‘There,’ Fingon says. ‘That’s how we eat the soup.’ 

‘He’s not a child, Fingon,’ Maglor says. ‘He’s not coming back.’

Maglor sinks onto the rug beside the fire. His hair is a mess. It falls over his shoulders, over his face. Maglor is never this messy, this thin. He isn’t this wild. He never screamed and gasped before, bent over, sobs shaking his body, wailing, ‘Why won’t he talk? Why won’t he look at us?’

Maedhros feels the soup run over his lips and fall down his chin. Fingon dabs at it. He offers another spoonful. ‘And now we close our mouth.’ He shuts Maedhros’s lips with his fingers. ‘And we swallow.’ 

‘He’s not there!’ Maglor says. 

Maglor says this a lot. He says it and cries. He says it and throws his hands down. He says it and collapses to the floor and shakes like a dog. 

At other times he asks Maedhros if he is there. He asks it, face pressed against his, holding his one hand between both of his. He begs him to be there. ‘Please, please, please, come back.’ He cries. He rubs his hand. ‘If you’re there, let us know. Please, say something. Nod. Blink.’ 

Maedhros stares.

Maglor breaks down into tears again. 

That happens again and again. Maedhros doesn’t know why he can’t blink. Just blink. How hard is it to blink. 

But he doesn’t. And Maglor cries. 

‘There we are,’ Fingon says. He is offering another spoonful of soup. It’s warm and salty, and Maedhros wants to eat it, but he’s too used to being empty. 

‘He’s dead,’ Maglor says. 

Fingon doesn’t answer. 

Maedhros wonders if he is dead. He thinks he might be dead, but he seems to be breathing still. It’s hot and cold and hurts each time. But maybe this is what being dead is. Maybe you keep breathing. Maybe it hurts constantly and your vision becomes blurred and the world becomes disconnected colours. Maybe there is nothing more than this. And you’re trapped forever until they burn you or bury you. 

Maybe they should let him go. 

‘Good,’ Fingon says again. He’s gotten another spoonful of soup into Maedhros’s mouth. Maedhros feels it run down his throat. He coughs. 

Fingon smiles. ‘Good.’ 

Maglor kneels in front of Maedhros. ‘Are you there? Brother?’ He strokes his cheek. ‘Please… Please do something?’ 

Maedhros wants to stroke his cheek. He wants to say, ‘I’m here now.’ He wants to manage to cough again, or blink, but his eyes are fast open, and his lips are frozen. 

‘It’s like watching a corpse.’ 

‘But he walks and he breathes!’ 

Maglor turns away. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to watch your brother...’ He leaves. 

Fingon turns back to Maedhros. ‘And now we eat the soup.’ He smiles. ‘It’s good.’


	2. 8

The sun hasn’t risen in days. Maedhros waits by the window, watching dark clouds move over the stars. 

He has forgotten what the sun is. He has forgotten the moon.

He sits in his chair, and he watches himself in the mirror. He lies on his bed, and he watches the clouds quiver and fold, quiver and fly. 

Fingon washes him. Maedhros feels like he’s floating when he’s in the bath. He sits in the tub, and his arms rise up. His legs are weightless in the water. Fingon whispers, ‘Good, good.’ Fingon wets a wash cloth. 

Maedhros can blink now. He blinks slowly, and his eyes feel weighted. He forgets how to open his lids again. 

Once he almost said yes. 

His stomach was hurting, and it felt like it was shrinking again. (Like every part of him had shrunk before.) Maglor asked if he wanted food, and he’d opened his mouth, and he’d almost said yes. Maglor gave him broth, and that was good. 

‘Are we warm enough?’ Fingon asks and drapes a blanket around Maedhros’s shoulders.‘What are we thinking about?’ 

Maedhros is thinking about hanging. How the pain went and then came back again. And each time it was worse than he remembered. 

Even now he waits for the pain to come back, To come and settle on each nerve. To flood his fingers, to burrow into his scalp – each hair on his body a new fire. He waits, and it doesn’t happen, and he wonders if he’s finally free. 

Maglor tells him he’s free. He kneels in front of him and holds his hands and says, ‘You’re free now. Please, come back to us.’ 

Maedhros hasn’t gone anywhere. He is there with them at all times. Or maybe he never is.

How can he be free? How can he be there? How can he be anywhere else?

It didn’t even hurt when Fingon cut off his hand. 

It was fast. The blade was sharp enough. He didn’t scream. He collapsed forward into Fingon’s arms and didn’t breathe. 

He didn’t breathe. 

Now he feels his hand where it isn’t, and he can’t be sure of anything. He flexes fingers that aren’t there. He reaches for the fire, and his arms are stiff at his sides. 

Life is nothing more than a series of moments. Each comes and goes, and he can’t tell when or why.   
He drinks broth and wine and water. He sleeps a half sleep smothered by nightmares. He is bathed when he is brought to the bath. He urinates when he is told. And each day slides into the next, and he can’t escape the laughter. 

‘What are you afraid of?’ Maglor asks, with thin lips, eyes shot, eyes wide. 

Maedhros is afraid of the laughter. He was supposed to be a king, and he was tortured, to laughter. And he was strung up, to laughter. And he was left, and they were laughing at him. 

Being in that much pain. Being a joke. 

He blinks at Maglor, and Maglor wraps him in his thin arms and praises him for being alive. It is hard, isn’t it? Being alive. 

Sometimes he wants to close his eyes and let his soul slip away, but he cannot do that. He cannot leave his vow. And that is why he has never died. And that is why he cannot die, even now, when death would be so peaceful. 

‘What are you thinking?’ Maglor asks. 

He is thinking about death. He is thinking about the pain in his lungs when he draws a breath in, the pain when he lets it out. He is never going to be free.

Free of pain. 

‘What do you want?’ Maglor asks.

He wants to be someone else. He wants to be wrapped in a blanket warm in a house that has never seen blood. He wants to cradle a child. He wants to breathe free. He wants to sculpt with both hands. 

But he is no one but himself. And he is alive here, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out. Watching clouds that billow over the sky. Watching his hair grow in. It’s dark and tangled on his head now. He trashes at night, and it tangles, and what can be done? 

He blinks when Maglor touches his arm, and Maglor gets him a water. He drinks thirstily. 

The clouds keep running. He cannot leave. He cannot stay. He is a spirit hovering in purgatory. 

The clouds fold and unfold. The clouds fade away. The stars are stitched tightly in the night sky, more beautiful than any jewel. Maedhros stares. The stars are fluttering. He isn’t supposed to be here. He wets his lip with his tongue. Two tears, one on each cheek, slide down his face.


End file.
